Deception Point (5 page)

Gabrielle had been a tremendous asset to his campaign since he’d promoted her to his personal campaign assistant three months ago. And to top it all off, she was working for
free. Her compensation for a sixteen-hour workday was learning the ropes in the trenches with a seasoned politician.

Of course,
Sexton gloated,
I’ve persuaded her to do a bit more than just work.
After promoting Gabrielle, Sexton had invited her to a late night “orientation session” in his private office. As expected, his young assistant arrived starstruck and eager to please. With a slow-moving patience mastered over decades, Sexton worked his magic . . . building up Gabrielle’s trust, carefully stripping away her inhibitions, exhibiting tantalizing control, and finally seducing her right there in his office.

Sexton had little doubt the encounter had been one of the most sexually gratifying experiences of the young woman’s life, and yet, in the light of the day, Gabrielle clearly regretted the indiscretion. Embarrassed, she offered to resign. Sexton refused. Gabrielle stayed on, but she made her intentions very clear. The relationship had been strictly business ever since.

Gabrielle’s pouty lips were still moving. “. . . don’t want you to be lackadaisical going into this CNN debate this afternoon. We still don’t know who the White House is sending as opposition. You’ll want to peruse these notes I typed.” She handed him a folder.

Sexton took the folder, savoring the scent of her perfume mixed with the plush leather seats.

“You aren’t listening,” she said.

“Certainly am.” He grinned. “Forget about this CNN debate. Worst case scenario, the White House snubs me by sending some low-level campaign intern. Best case scenario, they send a bigwig, and I eat him for lunch.”

Gabrielle frowned. “Fine. I’ve included a list of the most probable hostile topics in your notes.”

“The usual suspects no doubt.”

“With one new entry. I think you might face some hostile backlash from the gay community for your comments last night on
Larry King.”

Sexton shrugged, barely listening. “Right. The same-sex marriage thing.”

Gabrielle gave him a disapproving look. “You
did
come out against it pretty strongly.”

Same-sex marriages,
Sexton thought in disgust.
If it were up to me, the faggots wouldn’t even have the right to vote.
“Okay, I’ll turn it down a notch.”

“Good. You’ve been pushing the envelope a bit on some of these hot topics lately. Don’t get cocky. The public can turn in an instant. You’re gaining now, and you have momentum. Just ride it out. There’s no need to hit the ball out of the park today. Just keep it in play.”

“Any news from the White House?”

Gabrielle looked pleasantly baffled. “Continued silence. It’s official; your opponent has become the ‘Invisible Man.’ “

Sexton could barely believe his good fortune lately. For months, the President had been working hard on the campaign trail. Then suddenly, a week ago, he had locked himself in the Oval Office, and nobody had seen or heard from him since. It was as if the President simply could not face Sexton’s groundswell of voter support.

Gabrielle ran a hand through her straightened black hair. “I hear the White House campaign staff is as confused as we are. The President is offering no explanation for his vanishing act, and everyone over there is furious.”

“Any theories?” Sexton asked.

Gabrielle gazed at him over her scholarly glasses. “As it turns out, I got some interesting data this morning from a contact of mine in the White House.”

Sexton recognized the look in her eyes. Gabrielle Ashe had scored some insider information again. Sexton wondered if she were giving some presidential aide backseat blow jobs in exchange for campaign secrets. Sexton didn’t care . . . so long as the information kept coming.

“Rumor has it,” his assistant said, lowering her voice, “the President’s strange behavior all started last week after an emergency private briefing with the administrator of NASA. Apparently the President emerged from the meeting looking dazed. He immediately cleared his schedule, and he’s been in close contact with NASA ever since.”

Sexton certainly liked the sound of that. “You think maybe NASA delivered some more bad news?”

“Seems a logical explanation,” she said hopefully. “Although it would have to be pretty critical to make the President drop everything.”

Sexton considered it. Obviously, whatever was going on with NASA had to be bad news.
Otherwise the President would throw it in my face.
Sexton had been pounding the President pretty hard on NASA funding lately. The space agency’s recent string of failed missions and gargantuan budget overruns had earned NASA the dubious honor of becoming Sexton’s unofficial poster child against big government overspending and inefficiency. Admittedly, attacking NASA—one of the most prominent symbols of American pride—was not the way most politicians would think of winning votes, but Sexton had a weapon few other politicians had—Gabrielle Ashe. And her impeccable instincts.

The savvy young woman had come to Sexton’s attention several months ago when she was working as a coordinator in Sexton’s Washington campaign office. With Sexton trailing badly in the primary polls and his message of government overspending falling on deaf ears, Gabrielle Ashe wrote him a note suggesting a radical new campaign angle. She told the senator he should attack NASA’s huge budget overruns and continued White House bailouts as the quintessential example of President Herney’s careless overspending.

“NASA is costing Americans a fortune,” Gabrielle wrote, including a list of financial figures, failures, and bailouts. “Voters have no idea. They would be horrified. I think you should make NASA a political issue.”

Sexton groaned at her naïveté. “Yeah, and while I’m at it, I’ll rail against singing the national anthem at baseball games.”

In the weeks that followed, Gabrielle continued to send information about NASA across the senator’s desk. The more Sexton read, the more he realized this young Gabrielle Ashe had a point. Even by government agency standards, NASA was an astounding money pit—expensive, inefficient, and, in recent years, grossly incompetent.

One afternoon Sexton was doing an on-air interview about education. The host was pressing Sexton about where he would find funding for his promised overhaul of public schools. In response,
Sexton decided to test Gabrielle’s NASA theory with a half-joking response. “Money for education?” he said. “Well, maybe I’ll cut the space program in half. I figure if NASA can spend fifteen billion a year in space, I should be able to spend seven and a half billion on the kids here on earth.”

In the transmission booth, Sexton’s campaign managers gasped in horror at the careless remark. After all, entire campaigns had been sunk by far less than taking a potshot at NASA. Instantly, the phone lines at the radio station lit up. Sexton’s campaign managers cringed; the space patriots were circling for the kill.

Then something unexpected happened.

“Fifteen billion a year?” the first caller said, sounding shocked. “With a
B?
Are you telling me that my son’s math class is overcrowded because schools can’t afford enough teachers, and NASA is spending fifteen billion dollars a year taking pictures of space dust?”

“Um . . . that’s right,” Sexton said warily.

“Absurd! Does the President have the power to do something about that?”

“Absolutely,” Sexton replied, gaining confidence. “A President can veto the budget request of any agency he or she deems overfunded.”

“Then you have my vote, Senator Sexton. Fifteen billion for space research, and our kids don’t have teachers. It’s outrageous! Good luck, sir. I hope you go all the way.”

The next caller came on the line. “Senator, I just read that NASA’s International Space Station is way overbudget and the President is thinking of giving NASA emergency funding to keep the project going. Is that true?”

Sexton jumped at this one. “True!” He explained that the space station was originally proposed as a joint venture, with twelve countries sharing the costs. But after construction began, the station’s budget spiraled wildly out of control, and many countries dropped out in disgust. Rather than scrapping the project, the President decided to cover everyone’s expenses. “Our cost for the ISS project,” Sexton announced, “has risen from the proposed eight billion to a staggering
one hundred
billion dollars!”

The caller sounded furious. “Why the hell doesn’t the President pull the plug!”

Sexton could have kissed the guy. “Damn good question. Unfortunately, one third of the building supplies are already in orbit, and the President spent
your
tax dollars putting them there, so pulling the plug would be admitting he made a multi-billion-dollar blunder with
your
money.”

The calls kept coming. For the first time, it seemed Americans were waking up to the idea that NASA was an option—not a national fixture.

When the show was over, with the exception of a few NASA diehards calling in with poignant overtures about man’s eternal quest for knowledge, the consensus was in: Sexton’s campaign had stumbled onto the holy grail of campaigning—a new “hot button”—a yet untapped controversial issue that struck a nerve with voters.

In the weeks that followed, Sexton trounced his opponents in five crucial primaries. He announced Gabrielle Ashe as his new personal campaign assistant, praising her for her work in bringing the NASA issue to the voters. With the wave of a hand, Sexton had made a young African-American woman a rising political star, and the issue of his racist and sexist voting record disappeared overnight.

Now, as they sat together in the limousine, Sexton knew Gabrielle had yet again proven her worth. Her new information about last week’s secret meeting between the NASA administrator and the President certainly suggested more NASA troubles were brewing—perhaps another country pulling funding from the space station.

As the limousine passed the Washington Monument, Senator Sexton could not help but feel he had been anointed by destiny.

D
espite having ascended to the most powerful political office in the world, President Zachary Herney was average in height, with a slender build and narrow shoulders. He had a freckled face, bifocals, and thinning black hair. His unimposing physique, however, stood in stark contrast to the almost princely love the man commanded from those who knew him. It was said that if you met Zach Herney once, you would walk to the ends of the earth for him.

“So glad you could make it,” President Herney said, reaching out to shake Rachel’s hand. His grasp was warm and sincere.

Rachel fought the frog in her throat. “Of . . . course, Mr. President. An honor to meet you.”

The President gave her a comforting grin, and Rachel sensed firsthand the legendary Herney affability. The man possessed an easygoing countenance political cartoonists loved because no matter how skewed a rendition they drew, no one ever mistook the man’s effortless warmth and amiable smile. His eyes mirrored sincerity and dignity at all times.

“If you follow me,” he said in a cheery voice, “I’ve got a cup of coffee with your name on it.”

“Thank you, sir.”

The President pressed the intercom and called for some coffee in his office.

As Rachel followed the President through the plane, she could not help but notice that he looked extremely happy and well-rested for a man who was down in the polls. He was also very casually dressed—blue jeans, a polo shirt, and L.L. Bean hiking boots.

Rachel tried to make conversation. “Doing . . . some hiking, Mr. President?”

“Not at all. My campaign advisers have decided this should be my new look. What do you think?”

Rachel hoped for his sake that he wasn’t serious. “It’s very . . . um . . . 
manly,
sir.”

Herney was deadpan. “Good. We’re thinking it will help me win back some of the women’s vote from your father.” After a beat, the President broke into a broad smile. “Ms. Sexton, that was a
joke.
I think we both know I’ll need more than a polo shirt and blue jeans to win this election.”

The President’s openness and good humor were quickly evaporating any tension Rachel felt about being there. What this President lacked in physical brawn, he more than made up for in diplomatic rapport. Diplomacy was about people skills, and Zach Herney had the gift.

Rachel followed the President toward the back of the plane. The deeper they went, the less the interior resembled a plane—curved hallways, wallpapered walls, even an exercise room complete with StairMaster and rowing machine. Oddly, the plane seemed almost entirely deserted.

“Traveling alone, Mr. President?”

He shook his head. “Just landed, actually.”

Rachel was surprised.
Landed from where?
Her intel briefs this week had included nothing about presidential travel plans. Apparently he was using Wallops Island to travel quietly.

“My staff deplaned right before you arrived,” the President said. “I’m headed back to the White House shortly to meet them, but I wanted to meet you here instead of my office.”

“Trying to intimidate me?”

“On the contrary. Trying to respect you, Ms. Sexton. The White House is anything but private, and news of a meeting between the two of us would put you in an awkward position with your father.”

“I appreciate that, sir.”

“It seems you’re managing a delicate balancing act quite gracefully, and I see no reason to disrupt that.”

Rachel flashed on her breakfast meeting with her father and doubted that it qualified as “graceful.” Nonetheless, Zach Herney was going out of his way to be decent, and he certainly didn’t have to.

“May I call you Rachel?” Herney asked.

“Of course.”
May I call you Zach?

“My office,” the President said, ushering her through a carved maple door.

The office aboard Air Force One certainly was cozier than its White House counterpart, but its furnishings still carried an air of austerity. The desk was mounded with papers, and behind it hung an imposing oil painting of a classic, threemasted schooner under full sail trying to outrun a raging storm. It seemed a perfect metaphor for Zach Herney’s presidency at the moment.